One of Gloucestershire’s all-time greats will roll back the years at this summer’s Cheltenham Cricket Festival.

Courtney Walsh, now 63, will play for the Lashings World XI, a team known as the harlem globetrotters of cricket, in a special one-off game.

The fabulous one-time West Indies fast bowler will be the star turn when he lines up for a T20 game against Gloucestershire Gipsies on Thursday 13^th August.

“It should be a great day,” said Chis Coley, the driving force behind the game. “Hopefully, we’ll get lots of people coming to watch.

“It will add something extra to this year’s Cheltenham Festival, Courtney Walsh was a special player.”

Indeed he was. The former captain of both Gloucestershire and the West Indies took 519 Test match wickets at 24.44 and 1,807 first-class wickets at 21.71.

He also claimed 227 one-day international wickets and 551 List A wickets in a stellar career that spanned the best part of two decades.

He was a mainstay for Gloucestershire for 14 years from 1984 – the same year that he made his Test debut – and formed a fearsome new-ball partnership with David Lawrence, a partnership that twice went close to landing the County Championship title in the mid-1980s in the days when David Graveney was captain.

Coley said no other names had yet been confirmed for the game in August but the Lashings 2026 squad includes the likes of Sir Curtly Ambrose, Sir Gordon Greenidge, Monty Panesar, Adam Hollioake, Martin Bicknell, John Emburey and Ryan Sidebottom.

Gloucestershire Gipsies, a nomadic cricket team, celebrated their centenary in 2022. The match against the Lashings World XI starts at 2.30pm and tickets are £10.

Coley said that the Lashings are "delighted to be playing at Cheltenham".

This year’s Cheltenham Cricket Festival runs from Saturday 8^th August until Sunday 23^rd August.